Category Archives: Tutorials

Using AHK With Renoise

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Yesterday I talked about how you could use AutoHotkey to improve and speedup your computer use in general, but today I thought I’d show how it can be useful for making/playing music. Something more in line with what I usually write about. It’s nothing fancy and quite basic, I re-bound the Channel Mute keys in Renoise, which are Control + 0-9 on the keypad as default. What I did was remove the need to hold down the Control key so I could just hit the numbers on the keypad, ahk and renoiseand I bound several channel mutes together so I could press say 7 on the keypad and mute all hi-hats in one go.

Check the pic for a full view of the script including some notes (or grab it here, just open it in notepad), it’s a very simple AHK script that use the built in command SendInput to send key presses to the active window.

Also you can check the video (HD version on Vimeo as usual) where I try to use my brand new key-bindings, try is the keyword here lol. I didn’t practice any so I’m not exactly tight. The tune is just some lofi, glitchy thing I threw together. This specific script will only work with this songs layout, so you’ll have to make one for each song, unless you use the same layout on all your songs.



Tutorials and Music Players

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New site updates/features… first off I made a Tutorial page, I thought it’d be a nice thing to gather those I do in one place. There’s only two at the moment, but once I make a new one I’ll put it there as well. I usually make them on request, so if you’re wondering about something in particular regarding Cubase, Renoise,Wavelab, some VST/VSTi, or maybe even Photoshop, drop me a line. If I can help you and I have the time, I will.

Second thing.. A music player, J from Bluevibe reminded me about Soundcloud yesterday on twitter. I had totally forgot about it even though I signed up during it’s beta phase. So today I promptly uploaded some tracks, both on the Kvartersakuten account and the magOwl one. I will try to fit in at least one player here, just need to find some good spot for it, but for now I’ll just include one in this post.

Timestretching/Cutting Vocals in Cubase

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(HD version on Vimeo as usual)

Another short one, could have made it even shorter tho if the capture program allowed me to edit it without messing things up. So sorry for the dead-time in it here and there.

Oh and yeah, parts of this is made to import the vocals into Renoise later on (i.e. the cutting bit). Just ignore that if you’re not using Renoise. An if you’re using Logic or something else, I’m sure there are corresponding steps you can take there.

1. Line up the original tune (I’m not gonna show you how to count bpm… go google) to it’s bpm. Make sure it’s tight all the way through, which might take a little trial-and-error. If you can’t get it tight all the way .. well that’s a whole other video.

2. Line up the accapella with the original tune, and make sure that stays tight throughout as well.

3. Make a note of the original bpm and then change it to what you need it to be.

4. Timestretch the vocals to you bpm of choice, try to keep it relatively close to the original, or it will sound like shite. (no need to do the beat, only did it to make it easier to hear for the vid). As you see on the vid, Cubase has an original/input bpm value and an output one in the timestretch dialogue, that’s why we noted down the starting bpm before. Make sure both have the correct value.

5. Cut the vocals up into manageable pieces, and check the beginning so it doesn’t start early, like it does in the vid. If you forget, the intro will go off beat, and we don’t want that.

6. Bounce the individual parts down and rename them to something useful.

7. Import in Renoise.

Cutting Vocals in Renoise

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(HD version on Vimeo as usual)

Just a quick vid showing Beatslaughers suggestion on how to cut long samples/vocals in Renoise so you dont have to scroll all the way back to the top again to trigger it.
You will however need to line the sample up in its proper bpm first, I might do another little vid showing some basic timestretching and cutting using Cubase later on.